It was a scrambling, clanging noise that alerted us to peer out our window.
It was then that we saw, to our surprise, a circus of monkeys all climbing, swinging and sitting around, exhibiting their stolen stash of mangoes, apples and their grand prize- a grilled sausage!
Just next to our front door, were globs of monkey poo, attracting swarms of houseflies to them like bees to honey. Certainly in all my imaginings of what missionary life would be, I did not foresee the day that Cliff and I, he armed with bug spray and I weaponed with paper and a bag, would be clearing monkey poo off our doorstep!
Just as we had left our home in Singapore, Cliff had praised me for dealing so well with the adjustment stress of packing to Uganda. But nothing prepared us for the tears as we left in a taxi to the airport, with our home packed in 3 suitcases for a new land. What differences in homes we had dwelled in, in the past 2 years!
In a span of a few short months, we had left our jobs, packed up our homes, left Singapore to Canada to say goodbye to Cliff’s family, left Canada back to Singapore to tie up loose ends, left Singapore to Malaysia for church camp, left Malaysia to Singapore for intensive missions training, and then in a flurry, left Singapore to Uganda.
Having left my parents’ lego-like, sterile-looking double-storey glass condominium unit with a pool and gym to live in a rented place with Cliff after we married, then visiting his family’s three-storey house in Canada with a front and backyard filled with squirrels and deer, built-in basement, heater and air-conditioning, to a hostel premise on a public health institute compound in Africa a seventh of the area of our home we live in in Singapore, proudly patrolled by monkeys, squirrels and large birds, I started to wonder- what and where is my home?
Now, here we are in the heart of Africa. Yes, we do not have hot water, baths are from a bucket and bowl, the nights are sometimes filled with pounding disco music from the valleys till the wee hours of the morning, and internet is sparse.
But over here, the air is fresh, the weather is a beautifully cool most times, birds of all kinds, strange and beautiful, greet us in the early mornings and evenings, and the view of the sunset and sunrise over a hilltop greets us daily.In this home, we have been blessed with just about everything we need to live and love.
It is simple, but it is enough.
Cliff once told me, in between my tears, that Home is where each other is.
Home is in my parents’ home where I grew up in; Home is our old house where our special drawing and story is; Home is in Canada where endless forests, breathtaking scenery and where my husband is most “in his element”; Home is now here, where we are rebuilding a new life.
Now I understand the missionary term “third culture”, where one can never truly feel a sense of “home” no matter where one is.
But more than all of this, perhaps it is this constant moving, constant adjusting, constant sense of displacement, that helps us see, more clearly than ever before, that Home is just not meant to be here- aren’t we all passing pilgrims?
So I long for the time when my day is done, when I am called Home- where there in my Father’s arms, I will truly know what Home is.
In our little sitting room in Africa, where we have made our home
“ … They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting,
and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world.
People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home.
If they were homesick for the old country,
they could have gone back any time they wanted.
But they were after a far better country than that- heaven country.
You can see why God is so proud of them,
and has a City waiting for them.
– Hebrews 11:14-16 (The Message version)
“For our citizenship is in heaven,
from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ…”
– Philippians 3:20